Fremont, California - September 22, 2010 - Hurricane Electric, the world’s largest IPv6-native Internet backbone and colocation provider, today announced that the company’s IPv6 certification, Tunnel Broker and free IPv6 servicesFree DNS Service have over 113,000 combined users in 171 countries. In addition, Hurricane Electric has certified over 1,400 IPv6 Sages, the highest level of certification.

To complement Hurricane Electric’s popular IPv6 support tools, the company has launched a YouTube channel to give members of the networking community weekly updates on the state of IPv6 transition and IPv4 address-space exhaustion, as well as a hands-on look at best practices. “We are pleased that so many in the networking community – from network administrators to corporate CIOs – have decided to take advantage of our free IPv6 services,” said Mike Leber, Hurricane Electric’s President. “Hurricane Electric continues to be committed to providing enterprises with a smooth transition to IPv6. Our hope is that these tools and the launch of Hurricane Electric’s YouTube channel will give renewed attention to this serious issue. As one of the few IPv6-native ISPs, we are ready to assist.”

The majority of Internet traffic today is composed of IPv4 transmissions, but the IPv4 protocol’s 32-bit address will soon be inadequate to accommodate the rapidly growing number of Internet-connected devices. In order to avoid projected address-space depletion, IPv4 systems must be transitioned to the newer IPv6 protocol, which has a vastly larger address space. In addition to providing distinct, globally- routable addresses for all devices connected to the Internet, the IPv6 protocol also mandates network- layer security and simplifies certain network configuration tasks.

Hurricane Electric first deployed IPv6 on its global backbone in 2001. Hurricane Electric’s global Internet backbone is one of the few that is IPv6-native and does not rely on internal tunnels for its IPv6 connectivity. IPv6 is offered as a core service and every customer is provided IPv6 connectivity, as well as classic IPv4 connectivity. Hurricane Electric connects to more than 900 associated IPv6 backbones. Hurricane Electric offers IPv4 and IPv6 transit solutions over the same connection, at speeds up to 10 Gbps. Within its own global network, the company has 45 major exchange points with connectivity to more than 1,500 different networks. Employing resilient fiber-optic topology, Hurricane Electric has no less than four redundant paths crossing North America, two separate paths between the U.S. and Europe, and rings in Europe and Asia.

On Tuesday, Hurricane Electric announced three new points-of-presence. In addition to Hurricane Electric’s popular tools, Hurricane Electric offers Exhaustion Counter, an iPhone/Android application and web widget nicknamed “ByeBye v4” that counts down the days to IPv4 address depletion.

About Hurricane Electric
Hurricane Electric is a leading Internet Backbone and Colocation Provider. Hurricane Electric operates its own global IPv4 and IPv6 network and owns several data centers in Fremont, California, running multiple N-by-10 Gbps links throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Founded by Mike Leber in his garage in 1994, Hurricane Electric now operates the largest IPv6 Internet Backbone in the world as measured by the number of networks connected.